Hand Me Down World (8 page)

Well, some were unhappy with this chosen invisibility. These ones exposed themselves by their demands, their cravings. They wanted notoriety. Presence. Headlines. Fame. They wanted to be talked about. The model was the FFF (Fuck the Fucking Fuckers). The FFF, in our view, were not truly anarchistic. They took part in May Day parades. They sold T-shirts and mugs. They marched under banners. In other words, they lived in their narrow strip of floorboard and in their small rooms huddled up to tiny windows dreaming of becoming what they were not. We decided to split. After that we stayed in the east and they went to the train routes in Mitte and pussy areas like Prenzlauer Berg.

When I first saw her I was on a train. Naturally. It was at night, in May. May? If not, early June. No, I think this is incorrect. The evenings were still crisp. I will say May. On the platform people stood by themselves, collars turned up. Occupying their holes in the night air. Is that an expression? I think Rilke would accept it. So. The train sweeps in and gathers up the crowd, and then it is like a sleeping sickness: the train sways, the people sway and nod off like babies in their cribs. Crib. Bassinet. Same thing. It is all the same word. The head of a sleeping man fell against her and she got up and moved to the standing area by the doors. But for that sleeping man's head I might not have noticed her, but for that acorn, that apple…I would not have looked up from my own sleeping sickness and moved my knees for her to get past.

We are drawing into the next station when a ticket inspector enters our carriage. There is, as always, a rise of tension. I get up to make my move, and that's when I see the black woman making her way to the next carriage…and I know. Many get on the train without a ticket, especially late at night. This morning, for example, there was a stampede. I looked up from my stolen newspaper. It was a Chinese woman. She ran down the carriage. She looked like she was fleeing fire or the Japanese. The ticket collector calmly followed. He looked prepared to let her get away. I have seen young girls sitting with their knees pressed together, their heads lowered in shame, some in tears. I've seen so many escorted off the train. Tourists, as well, looking baffled and enraged. I can usually see at a glance who has a ticket. Who does not. But this woman…

She is dressed in a smart blue coat. Very stylish. Italian design. Her face has an earned dignity. I would not have picked her. In the next carriage I find her near the doors, a nervousness twitching in her now. Standing right behind a tall, thin guy with his eyes closed. So, she is not alone. At Alexanderplatz we all dash out. In the crowd and in the rush she drops something. I'm the one following up behind so I pick it up, a plastic bag which I hand to her. She snatched it back. Snatched is a word? Then, realising I am not a thief, she managed a ‘thank you'. And with it an ease crosses her face as if to make an adjustment from the moment of accusation just a second ago. I am used to these corrections. My customers always see a thief, an opportunist, before they see the helpful tradesman that I consider myself to be, a fixer of souls, a mood regulator, all of which I achieve with the proper exchange of goods and services.

Now. Why? I don't know. Even now I cannot say why. It just erupts from me. I tell her, My name is Bernard. For eighteen months I have been Millennium Three. I have not used the name Bernard once. Why? Why just then, at that moment? Inexplicable? Yes. I think so. It is a confusing moment. And there we stand, facing one another, as if there should be more, that something else should quite naturally flow from this encounter. The other passengers have pushed past us, the train has left, and now quite naturally we walk together to the top of the escalators. Nothing is said. Yet we are in step. We come out of the station to the plaza. There is a number of wurst stands. I am not hungry. I am rarely hungry. Hunger is just a physical fact. If you cannot move beyond it then you cannot hope to live as we do. But you see, at that moment, the Bernard of Parisian existence has emerged from the rubble of my new being. Bernard knows what to do in a way that Millennium Three has forgotten. He—that is I, of course—he asks if she would like a wurst. To my surprise—Millennium's, that is—she agrees. She ate two. While she is eating I manage to get a proper look at her. It's clear she has nowhere to sleep. No roof or bed. She has just got off a train from somewhere and is new to the city. So the next thing is very obvious really. I take her under my wing. Again, nothing is said or proposed. It just happens, like the weather.

We leave the wurst stand, wait for a tram to crawl by, cross the tracks to the station, climb more escalators. A two-minute wait on the platform during which time nothing is said, nor is there a chance to feel the cold; then the usual carriage smell of coats, beer, ash. We are on the S-Bahn heading to the east of the city. At Warschauer we get off the train and I lead her into my neighbourhood, if I can claim any as my own. Actually, this happens to be an FFF neighbourhood. But those of us who eschew the narrow floorboard have settled a spacious abandoned warehouse. This neighbourhood and the one of cobbles, trees and cafes is connected by a hole in a long wall. I show her where, and lead her through the darkness, past the fires.

I must admit it is nice to have someone's company. Someone to lie beneath the night with. I have a mattress and a pillow. I build a small fire. I still have a bottle of Grand Marnier given to me by a grateful woman who had wept at Rilke's poem ‘Loneliness'. She also gave me some euros. As you know I insist on proper exchange of goods and services. The Grand Marnier was a gift.

At last I have a name. Ines.

Ines does not want to drink. She is tired. She just wants to lie down. I make sure she has the good side. I take the lumpy side. I give her the pillow but not before I slip it inside a clean T-shirt that I stole from the Turkish market that morning. It is red and has the Turkish crest.

In the morning I wake to find her still there. Her African face looks beautiful against the Turkish red.

I am surprised. But only for that moment. Then I am surprised that I am surprised. Why not? Why wouldn't she be there? I slip outside for a pee. The fires have burnt down. Across the landscape people are sleeping. A woman wriggles out of a sleeping bag. It is like watching a caterpillar emerge from its cocoon. She is naked, and as she squats her dark pubis spreads. Behind her, sleepy young men stand around peeing carelessly. As I am peeing I realise I'm happy. Which is interesting. Very interesting to me. Because if I am happy at that particular moment, what was I before this woman arrived in my life? Briefly I reconsider my entire philosophy and political liaisons—but only while I am peeing. The crisis soon passes. The moment I do up my trouser buttons all is forgotten, all that questioning, and I return to the inexplicable arrival of this woman into my life and these new inexplicable feelings.

For the next eight days we are together. There is no sex. At night, when we lie down together, she will allow my hand to rest on her hip. Sometimes she will talk in her sleep. I listen carefully. But it is in a language that I don't know. We have to speak in English. She has three French words.
Bonjour
and
merci beaucoup
. She manages them quite naturally, unlike English people, who after uttering these words stand there beaming as if they require a medal to be pinned to their lapel.

For those eight days we are together almost twenty-four hours a day. Except for two hours every afternoon when she leaves me. I don't know where she goes or what she does. Once I tried to come along. She told me—No—she must go alone. She did not explicitly tell me not to follow. And I don't, don't even consider doing so, until she arrives back from these journeys in a state. The first time I can see she has been crying. She refuses to say why. Then, another time when she is late arriving back I find her sitting by the wall and sobbing; her face is in her hands. She refuses to take her hands away. She will not let me into her misery.

So, is her mysterious journey for a liaison? I thought, well, that is her right, in which case I should not be following, but I do. I follow her along the tramlines, down side streets, onto another and another, through the maze of Kreuzberg until we end up at the canal. There is a cycle path, some trees. There's a wurst stand on the corner where the traffic comes off the little bridge.

I stay back on the other side of the canal. I am close enough. I can see perfectly well. Ines is standing beneath the trees gazing up at a third-floor window. Inexplicable? Yes. A mystery. A complete mystery. Of course I want to find out. I must. This is our nature. We do not walk away from mystery. We are drawn to it like moths. Time passes. Half an hour. Five minutes. It is all the same. Then, as I am watching, a man emerges from the building. A black man. Well dressed. A white satiny buttoned-down shirt. Dark trousers. Expensive-looking shoes. He walks briskly across the cobbles to where my Ines is beneath the trees. For the next few minutes they talk. The man is very animated. Well, I would say angry. He towers over her, trying to intimidate her. But at the same time he is not comfortable with the situation because he keeps looking up the street, both ways—he is afraid of being seen.

Ines is also a bit animated. More so than I have ever seen her. She has to talk up to him; he is tall. Now they are both talking. Both of them talking over the top of one another. When she begins to beat her fists against his chest he doesn't move away. If anything he moves a little closer, looks up the street, down the other way. He gives her a shove. The force causes her to step backwards. Then she comes forward beating her fists against him. Now I can hear her, a faint cry above the traffic.

On the third floor a window is raised. Something is shouted down at the street. Then the sash is dropped. That all happens in such a hurry that after I can't recall if I actually saw anyone at that window. When I look back at the two figures under the trees he is hitting her. I don't stop to think. If I did it would have been to remind myself to remove myself from my own narrow board of existence. I am not a fighter. I am a poet. Well, a poet-thief. But there I am running across the bridge, across the traffic. I am running, and then I am flying like a bird, a thin under-fed eagle, and I crash against his shoulder and send him sprawling to the ground with me on top of him. I hit him on the side of his head. He tries to bite my hand. I knee him in the balls. He sticks his thumb in my eye. I grab his ear and twist it until he squeals like a piglet. Then I hit him in his mouth. Again and again. Then he hits me in the temple until, my God, the bells are ringing in my head, all the bells in Paris and across Germany are ringing in my head. Then I remember. I am not in Notre Dame. I am not in the Berliner Dom. I remember to hit him. He tries to get up. This is something which I must prevent. If he is allowed to get up he will hit Ines. So I drag him down to the ground and we roll under the trees over the dirt and the dog shit. We claw at each other. He is trying to press his thumb into my eye again. I punch his nose and his mouth until he removes his thumb. He grabs my hair and pulls and twists. I hit his nose, and knee him in the balls again, and we roll over more dog shit. I am suddenly aware of a cycle wheel and another and another. A party of cyclists has stopped to watch. By now I am out of breath. My enemy is also panting. We hit one another when we remember to, or when one of us has found the extra energy from somewhere.

Then a woman begins yelling. A black woman. Not Ines. The man rolls away from me. This woman is yelling at him and at me, but with me her voice changes pitch. I am a dog she has pulled off her prize pedigree. She would like to shoo me away, chase me off with a stick, that is, until the man, my enemy, holds up a hand to silence her. There is a thin line of blood trickling from one nostril which I am unwholesomely thrilled about. There is dirt on one cheek. His expensive shirt is torn, which I am also very happy about. I wonder what Ines will make of this, what she will say.

I look around, but I cannot see her in that crowd. The cyclists are getting back on their bikes. Two dog walkers continue to stand there. They are smiling, and even the dogs look contented. There is no Ines. I can hear a siren approaching. Although I can hear it I don't think any more of it. I turn my attention back to her attacker. He looks mystified. In Deutsch he asks me, ‘Who are you?' Actually, he asks, ‘Who the fuck are you?' And I have to stop and think, stop and really think, Who am I? Because just at that moment to reply ‘I am Millennium Three' strikes me as silly. It would sound implausible. On the other hand, Bernard is not right either. If Ines was there I might have answered ‘Bernard'. But she is not. I can't see her. I don't even know in which direction she took off. I never saw her again.

eleven

The film researcher

She was sitting on the concrete verge. I might not have noticed her any other time or for that matter at another stage in my life. An African woman sitting alone. I might have looked once and forgotten her. As I walked by her eyes tilted up at me. I carried on and near the casino I stopped to turn and look back. That's when I noticed the plastic bag: the way it perched on her knees and how she held onto it with both hands. She didn't look like a beggar because the other thing—and this by startling contrast— was her expensive blue coat. It had seen better days, but its style and cut still shone through. And I would say the same went for the person.

I'd been in Berlin most of the winter, hanging around Alexanderplatz—that's the general area where I saw her— observing the Roma as I might a cage of parakeets. It was John Buxton of Sun Rise productions who gave me the gig researching the Roma, all of them women, and all beggars, around the station. Just write down your impressions, he said. That is very imprecise. Worryingly imprecise for someone just two years out of the London Film School.

I had been working on a short film in Lambeth on wild-plot gardeners. You know, people who grow cabbages on traffic islands and place beehives on the rooftops of canal barges. Then this came up. Thanks to my Aunt Julia. She used to be in film. Knows everyone. She and JB go a long way back. JB mentioned the project and Julia, who is irrepressible most of the time but particularly when she has my interests at heart, said she had the perfect researcher.